The Actor Who Wrote Plays

So early this morning that it may be more proper to say last night, William Shakespeare came to me. He looked just like his picture.

I said: "I am very honoured indeed you have come to my room."

"You're welcome is appreciated," he informed me. "It's curious," he continued: "It seems I'm right at home here in this your twenty-first century."

"To a great extent, you created the language we are capably of speaking."

He sat down on the edge of my bed. "I have a question."

"Shoot."

"Is it true that even after four hundred years no-one has surpassed me?"

I thought for a moment, dismissing the urge to be cruel. "No. Not a soul. As I said: You made the language, and there's no need to develop it any further."

He hung his head. "I didn't mean for it to happen: really, I didn't. I was merely an actor who wrote plays."

"Well, somehow it happened."

"Sigh!"

"All the other poets admired you."

"Why? Why?"

"And then some Germans translated them, and theatre-theory was born."

"I can't take this. How should I kill myself?"

"I got a gun downstairs."

He smiled. "You're kind."